𝔦𝔫𝔱𝔬 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝖕𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖘

Pen’s eyes focused on the patient chart in front of her. It was a busy day at the hospital and instead of being in the ER, where she usually was, she had been temporarily places in the psychiatric unit to balance out the rush of people they simply didn’t have time for. She took in a breath and flipped the chart closed before hanging it up for the doctor to grab when they got a moment to breathe- if they got a moment.

In her opinion, they should have expected this. Ashbourne was a home to the damaged and lost. A few locals, of course, but most had came there in the same way she had. Bloody and frightened. The memories of the night her life had been upended before her eyes was still stained in her mind. Her rage was still particularly fresh. But while others sought a professional to speak to, Pen did well working through her grief. Her mother had once said that the dead had no need for tears, so she no longer offered it.

The witch glanced up as a familiar face got her attention. She didn’t know Patricia well, but she was nice enough. Her time was mostly spent in the hustle and bustle of the emergency room, but she could recall hearing seeing her more than once.

She pursed her lips and let her eyes wander to the charts and piles of paperwork that littered the nurse’s station. “The psych ward’s one of the busiest departments.” She tried to explain as delicately as she could. “Doctor’s held up. He’ll get to you when he can. Don’t worry, shouldn’t be much longer.”

   First impressions had been a thing for Patricia for a long time. It was easier to let your guard down a tiny bit if someone was met first with the sweeter parts of your personality. She’d often take particular routes through the hospital to get to where she was going, having had more than one friend end up there in the last couple of years, and often ran into nurses and doctors here and there. She’d been born and raised in Ashbourne, but human, so much more delicate than most, and so people knew her and her friendly self more than most; except perhaps Willow...

   Not having wanted to ruffle feathers, she’d sidled over to Pen for the sheer fact that the woman didn’t tend to mince her words. She said what was on her mind and got to the point; professional, but not so curt as to be rude. It meant that when she needed the down and dirty information about what was going on she could seek out Pen, at least if Penelope was currently assigned to whatever floor she was on.

   “I figured. It’s getting to be that time of year where people go especially stir crazy. Cabin fever is pronounced here more than it is most places ‘cause most places... just have it when it snows. We can never leave, sooo...” Patricia had stopped mincing her own words or trying to hide the fact of her awareness about their dire situation, or the amount of people in the town that went bump in the night. It wasn’t as if she were keeping a directory, but it was still a thing.

ɪɴ ᴀʟʟ ᴀsᴘᴇᴄᴛs ᴏꜰ ʟɪꜰᴇ, ᴡᴇ ᴛᴀᴋᴇ ᴏɴ ᴀ ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀɴ ᴀᴘᴘᴇᴀʀᴀɴᴄᴇ ᴛᴏ sᴇᴇᴍ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇ ᴡɪsʜ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ–ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴜs ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ɪs ᴍᴇʀᴇʟʏ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴏsᴇᴅ ᴏꜰ ᴀᴄᴛᴏʀs. ― ꜰʀᴀɴᴄ̧ᴏɪs ᴅᴇ ʟᴀ ʀᴏᴄʜᴇꜰᴏᴜᴄᴀᴜʟᴅ

word count: 1283

trigger warnings: self-harm, mental illness, blood

Peter offered the girl a soft snort as she describe the state he was apparently in. If he was being honest, he would have preferred that to what was actually going on, but he wouldn’t drag that out and bum the poor girl out. Besides, why ruin such colorful imagery with something as boring as Peter’s vanilla brand of self-hatred? “I wouldn’t disagree, except that I actually rather enjoy having my hair yanked, so I can’t say that would put me in a sour mood.” His grin took a more devious smirk as he spoke, and he had enough in him to shoot the girl a playful wink before the facade fell a bit and he let out a sigh.

Her offer was kind. He would admit that. But he would never allow someone to simply take over his job for him, especially not someone that wasn’t even currently on his payroll. Besides, Patricia was here to enjoy herself, to watch a movie and relax. What kind of horrible person would let her work a job that wasn’t even hers in cases like that. Peter shook his head slowly, offered a grin. “Absolutely not. Do you know the paperwork I would have to fill out if someone found out I let a non-employee work? Besides, you’re here to have a good time, not to work for the rattled manager.” He offered her a small nudge. “But thank you for the offer.”

He let out a soft hum, however, as he thought back six summers. “I was here. I wasn’t managing yet, though. I was cleaning toilets and the sticky gunk off floors back then and didn’t actually speak much. Plus, I mostly worked the ten pm to three am shift back then.” He lifted his shoulders in a half shrug. It had been a terrible job and a terrible shift, but he had liked how quiet the theater got after the last show let out, and he had the place to himself to clean and set up for the next day. He hadn’t had ambitions of moving up, but the promotion had been nice. “If you ever want to come back, though, for real, just know that the job will always be yours. I would never turn down someone who was, self-proclaimed, pretty handy.”

   Poor little sacrificial lamb, she can’t even manage that right. She wasn’t upset by the rejection of her offer, and in fact just offered a smile in return, bobbing her head in a nod, “See, that’s a good point because I don’t want to make a shitty day even worse, you know?”

   The idea of seeing a movie by herself was always refreshing, because it meant she could sit and stew in her own form of self hatred and nigh-nihilistic thoughts that she didn’t dare allow any other hour of any other day. If someone were to sit Patricia down for long enough, that friendly smile would wilt at the edges like an old salad, and eventually her facade would crack into a thousand pieces and people would see that, though she is a sweet girl who wants to help, she’s also fully aware of her own limitations and the fact that life really does not like her.

   A glance around at the burgeoning crowds and her mind was whisked away to being 19 and working there, and how she had still been trying to perfect her mask to the point that it made sense; no one could expect her to be truly perky at that point, as she’d been taking care of her siblings and her mom had only been missing for a few years, but it allowed her time around people and learn how to make them smile while she mirrored it back in perfect unison... however untrue.

   “I might take you up on that. I mean I have the job at Town Hall, but it’s rare that anyone needs anything from that specifically because most people are just... we’ve sort of given up on the idea of most things so it’s all documentation and file work and eventually you don’t have anything left to do.” Patricia rambled a moment, then lifted her shoulders in a shrug, looking over to Peter.

   Game knows game, and she knew that he was not nearly so happy as he put on, but as he wasn’t smashing her own glass house with a hammer, she wouldn’t shatter his. She did, however, reach out to pat his shoulder, innocuous and friendly, “If you ever need anything though, you really can call me.”

Ordinarily, Finn brought his lunch to work. On a good day, he’d have time to eat it as he poured over useless paperwork. He knew the importance of record keeping, but some of the files he had to fill out and file away were entirely useless. Would they ever really need to go back to find the kid who spray painted a penis on the side of the library? Probably not. But Finn liked rules, no matter how silly they may seem. So he usually went along and ate his sad packed lunch over a stack of papers. 

Today, however, someone had stolen his lunch. It wasn’t a rare occurrence. A lot of Watchers just grabbed whatever they could on their way out the door to some emergency or other, not caring to check if it was their own. Huffing out a sigh, Finn shoved the papers aside and grabbed his wallet. For a town as sparse as Ashbourne when it came to good lunch spots, they at least had a food truck. Even this town couldn’t stop from keeping up with the foodie times, even if it was just one spot.

Jamaican was one of Finn’s favorite meals. He remembered Mari used to make it for him all the time with a pange of sadness. Whenever he tried to treat her, he always got the seasonings wrong, but she never told him it was terrible. It was with a small, sad smile on his face that he stood in line, deciding on his order. Finn was lost in memory when a girl bumped into him, clearly flustered. He smiled, holding his hands up in surrender. “Don’t worry about it! I shoulda been paying more attention!” Finn took a step to the side so the girl could pass. “Really, it’s no problem at all.” The woman looked familiar, maybe one of the Town Hall employees? “If you don’t mind my being nosy, what’d ya order? I’m looking to branch out from my norm today.”

   Her eyes cast a glance up to Finn, marking his face in her memory as she did most people when she met them both in daylight hours and in a situation which called for it. She could probably document the entire population of Ashbourne from memory alone, should those people have ever crossed the threshold of Town Hall where she had the most time to people watch in silence. She felt like she’d seen him before, but couldn’t quite place it, and though her brows knit briefly the smile never faltered.

   “Oh man, what a day to ask me that. I just got basic goat curry, honestly, but I have to say they have the best bammy’s here.” Patricia paused, realizing how stupid that statement would seem to most people as others had the ability to travel the world and eat Jamaican food IN Jamaica, but she shook her head for a moment and laughed, “Well, I imagine anyway... I’ve only ever had it from this food truck.”

   Patricia could very much be painted as the girl next door, though not the usual, traditional image of a blonde girl with a sweet attitude — her features were much darker, and would be considered ‘exotic’ in some places — she was just as sweet and tried to, at least most of the time, be as helpful as any she’d read about in the books. It was a persona she’d had for so long — and that was so close to the girl she could have been had the world not kicked her ass — that it felt less uncomfortable than the others; sadness need not permeate her being AND someone else’s because she decided to be dour.

A little stir crazy.

Maeve had only been in Ashbourne for half a year now but if everything that she had heard about the town was correct, then it seemed like she would be spending the rest of her life here in the small town – which meant the rest of, well, forever. She didn’t really know if it was possible at all that she could die. She’d been injured here and there over the years, injuries that she could have been deadly, but in the end, she had always come back to life again. Bleeding out or head trauma would not be enough to end her existence. Nothing had been capable of putting her down permanently. The daunting thought was one that she had dealt with a long time, but thinking of it did not compare to living it.

“Yeah, I guess that’s a good way of putting it.” She smiled. Smile and act human. That was all that she could really do, right? It was clear that this woman was another human from the way that she had phrased things. She seemed nice, clearly concerned with why she was out here and freaking out in the first place but not too pushy. It reminded her of herself, nearly.

“Unfortunately, the chances of waking up tomorrow and reading something horrid in the papers are already pretty high.” Except it would not be her face in the papers or her nae describing some kind of horrific death, if it made it into the papers to begin with. Just because someone died didn’t mean that their body would be found and taken care of properly. It was hard to guarantee especially in a place like this. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound like such a Debby downer. I’m not usually one but I suppose it’s just one of those nights. But I really am fine. And thank you, for coming over here.”

She glanced down at herself and gave a pathetic little laugh as she saw the mud on her clothes. “I really made a mess of myself, didn’t I?”

   Where Maeve didn’t know the extent of her own invulnerability, Patricia knew her lack thereof without a shadow of a doubt; she was fragile. Humans were far too squishy and far too eager to get into situations in which they could die, and in a place like Ashbourne those things came by the boatload (right across the lake, man one day she’d like to see the ocean but that’s a pipe dream.) She knew how stuck she was, and she knew that she’d died there in a very unimaginative way, buried in a plot next to her father and the stones her sister had set up to mark her mother’s grave, no body beneath it to take up space.

   A flash of lightning illuminated she and Maeve both, and gave Patricia a good idea of just how messy the other had gotten herself. Though she was in no way obligated to help Maeve, and truly should learn to mind her own business because it would be the death of her, there was a deep-seated desire to both do good things and get one’s self into trouble that played out in constant pantomime in Patricia’s brain. Her guess was that at this point the supernatural might outnumber the humans in town, and she didn’t really fault them their hungers or needs... if she were trapped she might start eating the townsfolk too, so to speak.

   “You’re fine, really. I mean a bit muddy, but it’s hard to NOT get muddy around here, especially when it’s raining. It feels like our soil’s all loose, you know? Like it’s never really settled.” Patricia offered, trying to distract the other woman from her own plight with a babbling story, “I once thought that there might be magic beneath this place, you know? Like a cavern of unseen tunnels that just fuel into this place and keep it like it is.”

   Patricia HAD truly believed that at one point, and had even gone into the backyard at their old house to dig into the soft soil to see how far she could get. When she banged right into the pipes and brought the house’s water to a standstill inside and nearly drowned herself outside, she decided to let that dream go too; she’d been eight.

Call outs might have been the bane of Peter’s entire existence. At the very least, it felt that way on this particular afternoon. He should have been gone hours ago. He should have gone home, gotten changed and gone to the gym. He shouldn’t be standing at the damn ticket taker’s booth, ripping stubs and directing people to the correct theater in the middle of the afternoon. He’d been there since six, repairing machines and recleaning theaters that employees had half-assed the night before. 

They had the horror event coming up, and Peter had tons to plan for that on top of everything else. Had to plan for all hands on deck and an absolute nightmare of a night. He hated events at the theater, but he put up with them. The town seemed to enjoy them, and his staff tended to make good tips on those special nights. He wouldn’t deny them their extra income.

It didn’t help that, with recent events, his mind simply wasn’t at work. Things were… not great and Peter might have been slipping in the sanity department, mind constantly buzzing with negative things.

A sigh left him as he ripped another ticket in half, waved to his left without a word. He was zoning out, surprised that his eyes weren’t glazed over completely yet. He came out of it when he heard his name called, and he managed a strained little smile as he lifted a hand in a bit of a half wave. “Patricia. How are things? Better for you than for me at the moment, I hope.”

   Going to a movie by one’s self wouldn’t be the metric by which most would measure their day as going well, but it allowed Patricia some quiet reflection, so it ended up being less daunting than most. She didn’t care about the women around her age who shuffled past on their way into a new film as a gaggle, as they whispered and cast a glance at her; everyone in Ashbourne was weird, and if going to a movie alone was the extent of her weirdness, she was coming out ahead.

  A shrug lifted her shoulders however and she moved over to Peter so that she wasn’t shouting across the place and could have a normal conversation, “You look like someone spit in your sandwich and then yanked your hair, so I’d imagine I’m probably doing better by that measure. Do you, uh... do you need any help? I mean I’m seeing a movie but if you’re stuck a bit I can sub in... no one needs that kind of stress.”

   Part of being a Forrester was offering yourself up as charity a lot. She, her brother, and her sister had all inherited that quality from their father, and sometimes it was to a fault; it was hard to pull yourself out of a self-sacrificing nosedive before you splattered against the concrete like a warm melon, but her smile never faltered, “I don’t mind.. I worked here like... six summers ago? I think it was before your time but I’m pretty handy.”

When: 2:45 pm

Who: @penxramos

   When her mother had disappeared — dead or whatever had happened, Patricia still didn’t know — the court had put her and her siblings into therapy. Patricia had hated it from the start, feeling like it was just another way to find out how utterly stuck she was while also being stuck in some kind of psychosis in her head, but... she did it so she could eventually take care of Ben and Celeste without anyone meddling in their business.

   The more adult, responsible, and law-abiding she seemed, the better off they’d be, after all.

   The issue came when it had to continue. She had bi-monthly visits that had to happen, and she didn’t have any wiggle room, even though she and her siblings were well old-enough to be outside of that sort of court mandate, she had always been so ‘good’ after sessions — as far as her siblings were concerned, a thing she played up for their benefit — that they’d somehow talked her into going every few months even after ten years had passed.

   Patricia suffered a lot for the sake of her brother and sister, but she’d learned that her doctors were less than convinced of her status. She’d been fine passing off her ‘slightly sombre but overall just okay’ attitude when she was in her teens, but as an adult and with the ever-looming reality of her lacklustre future ahead of her, she became more melancholy and hiding it became harder, especially at the hands of a skilled psychiatrist.

   As another woman had come out to tell her that her doctor would be late, she sidled up to Penelope, a woman she knew well enough as she’d been here for over a year and Patricia had been coming since she was a child, and heaved a sigh, “Do you know what’s up, Pen? I gotta get home at some point and I just... it’s giving me agita.”

When: 3:45 pm

Who: @peterwolfboylopez

   While a day off was not totally unheard of for Patricia, she often didn’t take them because the office allowed a certain measure of solace and solitude that she could easily work with. The weekends were for her siblings, and then her smile was painted on — easy laughter, measured jokes, and generally trying to feel as happy as she could with the people she gave a shit about within Ashbourne — and it made it harder to just exhale.

   That meant on her days off when they were busy, she found ways to occupy herself, afraid of that if she spent too much time in true solitude — not the solitude of her work at Town Hall, as it was still very much around people — her mind might wander to her mother, or father, or other things that made her spine jump into her throat; like the fact that she’d never see anything but Ashbourne for as long as she lived.

   The movie theater offered her a chance to be social — however pathetic it might be for a twenty-five year old to be seeing a movie by herself in the middle of the afternoon — and yet avoid having to talk for long stretches as they set up whatever movie was going to be playing for now. At one point they’d had Doctor Dolittle playing for a month and a half when she was younger and she’d been there half a dozen times with her dad. The place held fond memories, and yet hung like a shadow threatening to release its putrescence on her.

Her throat ached from the force of the scream that had been projected from it and she was sure that it was a psychosomatic response to it more than anything else. So many years alive and yet she still was not entirely desensitized to the consequences that her own immortality had brought upon her (more bad than good, she was certain). Even when it had finished escaping into the night air, she remained on her hands and knees int he mud for a moment, trying to even back out her breathing and keep her emotions at bay. This was a town full of death, she knew that from the spirits that walked around just as plentifully as any other creature in this town. Moreso, perhaps. If she was going to be stuck here for the rest of her days, she was going to have to get used to this. It seemed there was no other choice.

Maeve should have known that the shrill screech would have brought the attention of others upon her. Even if the volume projected was not so horrendously loud, it was a town full of things that weren’t human, things with heightened senses. But she wasn’t quite ready for company. This was one of the few things that could take that away from her.

“I’m…” She wanted to lie and to say that she was fine like she always did when there was something bothering, to find something else to expend her focus and energy on. But there was no immediate distraction in sight. The lie that she wanted to deliver wasn’t strong enough to reach the surface just yet. She was going to have to come up with something else and quick. The scream itself hadn’t been enough to give what she was away. She needed an excuse.

“I’m so sorry.” That was all that she could muster up for a moment.

Dirt on her hand was quickly wiped off onto the front of her dampened jeans before she could take the extended hand and bring herself back onto her feet again, hoping that at least physically she could be a little more steady than what she felt at the moment. “I really didn’t mean to cause any alarm,” she began quickly. “I certainly didn’t mean to put anyone out in the weather while it’s like this. I just… I uh, I’m sorry, I wish that I knew hot to explain it.”

   Patricia, being human and all too fragile, knew too well just exactly how inundated her hometown was in the supernatural; not all of them were bad, per se, but all of them had powers beyond that of her ken. She didn’t know how to even begin to deal with half of the things she now knew about that had seemed such a distant, hazy memory in her youth. It was unlikely she knew what Maeve was, but even if she had, her fight or flight instincts never worked right when others seemed in distress.

   Though a lot of her bubbly, loving personality was a front to hide the constant anxiety and sadness she felt in the town — as much an armor for her siblings as it was for her — she truly did give a shit about people and what happened to them. To be more specific, though, any living being in distress gave her heart pangs and tugged her out of herself and she would forever put herself in the line of danger for the sake of others; it was a blessing and a curse.

   As Maeve was trying to collect herself, and especially after she had taken Patricia’s hand to pull herself back to her feet, she smiled at her. It wasn’t too broad, but it also wasn’t placating; somehow it was just that: a smile, genuine and true but not... not too much? Sometimes she surprised herself with it, but it took her a moment before she shook her head and offered, “Hey, look... we all go a little stir crazy here sometimes, right? We’re surrounded by walls we can’t see and trapped with a dozen or so things that we didn’t think existed outside of our dreams or nightmares.”

   Painfully human, Patricia reached out, rain running down her face and body and soaked through to her bone, and pressed a hand lightly to Maeve’s shoulder. She didn’t want to invade her bubble, but she felt like perhaps it would help, “Whatever’s haunting you, you have every reason to just let it out every now and again, right? I just... I didn’t want you to be in trouble and ignore it, you know? Wake up tomorrow and read something horrible in the paper and know I could have done something...”